Yet this is by no means
to say that every mutilation or transformation the child proposes is a
copy after an erroneously selected model; rather the child's
imagination has a wide field here and acts in manifold fashion,
especially by combinations. "My teeth-roof pains me," said a boy who
did not yet know the word "palate." Another in his fourth year called
the road (Weg) the "go" (Gehe). A child of three years used the
expression, "Just grow me" (_wachs mich einmal_) for "Just see how I
have grown" (Sieh einmal wie ich gewachsen bin) (Lindner). Such
creations of the childish faculty of combination, arising partly
through blending, partly through transference, are collected in a neat
pamphlet, "Zur Philosophie der Kindersprache," by Agathon Keber, 1868.
The most of them, however, are from a later time of life than that
here treated of. So it is with the two "heretical" utterances
communicated by Roesch. A child said _unterblatte_ (under-leaf) for
"Oblate," because he saw the wafer (Oblate) slipped under the leaf of
paper (Blatt); and he called the "American chair,"
"Herr-Decaner-chair," because somebody who was called "Herr Decan"
used to sit in it. Here may be seen the endeavor to put into the
acoustic impression not understood a meaning. These expressions are
not inventions, but they are evidence of intellect. They can not, of
course, appear in younger children without knowledge of words, because
they are transformations of words.
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